List of Edward Said Quotes

Until The June 1967 War I Was Completely Caught Up In The Life Of A Young Professor Of English. Beginning In 1968, I Started To Think, Write, And Travel As Someone Who Felt Himself To Be Directly Involved In The Renaissance Of Palestinian Life And Politics.

Ironically, Many Of These People, Including Osama Bin Laden And The Mujahedeen, Were, In Fact, Nourished By The United States In The Early Eighties In Its Efforts To Drive The Soviets Out Of Afghanistan.

There Is Also This Great Sense Of Triumphalism, That Just As We Defeated The Soviet Union, We Can Do This. And Out Of This Sense Of Desperation And Pathological Religion, There Develops An All-encompassing Drive To Harm And Hurt, Without Regard For The Innocent And The Uninvolved, Which Was The Case In New York.

To Say That We're Going To End Countries Or Eradicate Terrorism, And That It's A Long War Over Many Years, With Many Different Instruments, Suggests A Much More Complex And Drawn-out Conflict For Which, I Think, Most Americans Aren't Prepared.

Speaking As A New Yorker, I Found It (9/11 Event] A Shocking And Terrifying Event, Particularly The Scale Of It. At Bottom, It Was An Implacable Desire To Do Harm To Innocent People.

The Other View Is Of The Official United States, The United States Of Armies And Interventions. The United States That In 1953 Overthrew The Nationalist Government Of Mossadegh In Iran And Brought Back The Shah.

In 1985, A Group Of Mujahedeen Came To Washington And Was Greeted By President Reagan, Who Called Them "freedom Fighters." These People, By The Way, Don't Represent Islam In Any Formal Sense. They're Not Imams Or Sheiks. They Are Self-appointed Warriors For Islam.

Osama Bin Laden's Organization Has Spun Out From Him And Is Now Probably Independent Of Him. There Will Be Others Who Will Appear And Reappear. This Is Why We Need A Much More Precise, A Much More Defined, A Much More Patiently Constructed Campaign, As Well As One That Surveys Not Just The Terrorists' Presence But The Root Causes Of Terrorism, Which Are Ascertainable.

It [9/11] Transcended The Political And Moved Into The Metaphysical. There Was A Kind Of Cosmic, Demonic Quality Of Mind At Work Here, Which Refused To Have Any Interest In Dialogue And Political Organization And Persuasion. This Was Bloody-minded Destruction For No Other Reason Than To Do It.

[mujahedeen], By The Way, Don't Represent Islam In Any Formal Sense. They're Not Imams Or Sheiks. They Are Self-appointed Warriors For Islam.

[9/11] Was Not Meant To Be Argued With. It Wasn't Part Of Any Negotiation. No Message Was Intended With It. It Spoke For Itself, Which Is Unusual.

Speaking As A New Yorker, I Found [september 11] A Shocking And Terrifying Event, Particularly The Scale Of It.